


The Price for Magic

by withcoffeespoons



Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Canon Bisexual Character, Dreams and Nightmares, Emetophobia, Episode: s03e05 A Life in the Day, Gen, Guilt, M/M, Pre-Relationship, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 17:51:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18238247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withcoffeespoons/pseuds/withcoffeespoons
Summary: "I dream about them, sometimes."Not all dreams are nice ones.(Takes place during A Life in the Day, before the 1-year anniversary.)





	The Price for Magic

Quentin abruptly found himself forced back by the broad mass of Penny's advancing strides. “You son of a bitch,” Penny spat, hands tight on Quentin’s shoulders. He marched him backwards until he came to a sudden halt, the thick trunk of a tree at his back. Where was he? He looked around, trying to remember. The forest had no discernible edge, fading instead to a thick fog, surrounding them on all sides. Was this Fillory? Earth?

Then all he saw was Penny's face, close enough to his own to feel his breath. “Hey, dumbass, wanna pay attention?”

“Not...particularly,” Quentin stuttered. He half expected a punch in return for his honesty.

Penny's lip curled in disgust. “It’s bad enough you got me killed. Twenty-four fucking years old, and I—” He interrupted himself with a high, hysterical laugh. “Are you older than me now? Happy—“ he said, voice sounding anything but, “goddamn birthday.”

Quentin's eyes darted around the fog, seeking an escape, but Penny held him firmly. “Look, uh, okay yeah, it’s shitty but you can’t say that’s _my_ fault, uh, exactly.”

“I'm stuck without a body so I'm not a Library slave for a billion years. Which, the Library's what killed me in the first place. And how did that happen? Oh yeah, trying to find _your_ Fillory,” Penny said. "That seems pretty _your fault_." Quentin let his argument shrivel on his tongue. “I could be sitting in a classroom learning magic with my own fucking hands, but no, I’m dead.”

“W-what do you want me to do about it?” Quentin shouted back at him. The only way he knew how to fight Penny was with his own brand of weaponry.

“How about you get to be dead, and I get to fuck around in Fillory for a while?" And then he was leaning into Quentin's body and his lips were—was Penny kissing him?

Quentin let himself relax into the kiss just a fraction. Even if it was Penny, he could do this to shake the guilt. Except instead of a warm, soft press of lips, kissing Penny felt cold and stiff. His weight was suddenly unforgiving against Quentin. He tasted like death and rot. A roll of nausea rose up in Quentin’s stomach. He tried to pull away before he expelled the contents of his stomach into Penny’s mouth, but wedged as he was, he couldn't turn away entirely. He tilted his head toward the ground but as he retched he could feel his own warm vomit fall between their bodies, turning wet and bloody against Penny's chest.

Penny remained still and unblinking, covered in the blood that poured from Quentin’s mouth.

Hands reached from the fog to grab at Quentin, pulling him from Penny. Horrorstruck, Quentin couldn't move his head, eyes locked with the sight of Penny's pale, bloodstained corpse.

“Hey,” came a voice—familiar somehow—and Quentin was very suddenly lying on his back, held in place only by a soft hand against his shoulder. “You’re okay,” said the voice again.

Finally finding himself capable of movement, Quentin recoiled from the touch, gasping roughly as his eyes darted and snapped to face the voice.

Eliot. The cabin. Fillory. The Mosaic. The quest.

“Fuck,” Quentin breathed. Reality faded in as the fog of his dream lifted.

"I thought you were going to make yourself sick," Eliot said, his voice scratchy with sleep and concern.

Quentin laughed feebly.

"Wanna talk about it?" Was that trepidation in Eliot's voice, or simply exhaustion?

"Not really," Quentin said, voice rough. Might as well let Eliot off the hook. He squeezed his eyes shut in relief—a dream—but immediately regretted the darkness behind his eyelids as his mind offered up an imprint, an echo of Penny’s dead body, his empty, unblinking stare like an accusation.

"Wanna go back to sleep?" Eliot asked, still somewhere between awake and asleep, himself.

Fuck no, thought Quentin. He said nothing—no reason Eliot should worry.

“You can tell me,” Eliot said, voice forced casual. The sun was barely rising, but Eliot was already sitting up, always up with the sun these days. “About the dreams.”

Dreams. Plural. It wasn’t the first, just maybe the first Eliot has to wake him from, the first he remembered. Quentin fought down his humiliation.

“Wouldn’t help,” was all he said. He could barely make sense of it, himself, now that he was awake. The images faded beyond coherency. The thought of putting it into words left something ugly inside him.

Eliot was so still and silent that Quentin almost asked if _he_ wanted to talk about it, then, "It’s happening again. Isn’t it?"

Eliot didn’t need to explain. A few months along, after it became clear that this wasn't going to be as easy as they dared to hope, the powerlessness of the situation sank into Quentin's thoughts and dragged him down for weeks. Quentin had alternated between spells of insomnia and long stretches of lethargy that held him running in place.

And all the while, there was Eliot, carrying them both through it. Quentin saw, the whole time, the effect it had on him, the growing exasperation, the slow drain of his patience that Quentin knew would evolve into resentment. How could it not, when it was Quentin's fault they were here? So Quentin had pushed himself through it, just to keep him, to be there with Eliot and remind him that he wasn't alone in this quest, either.

And now Eliot thought it was happening again. It didn't matter that he was wrong.

"No," Quentin said, as though he had any authority over his brain. They both knew that even if it wasn't happening—yet—it didn't mean that it wouldn't.

"You're lying, aren't you?" Eliot asked.

Quentin rolled his eyes. "You know I suck at lying."

"I do,” he said, matter-of-fact. “Come on, talk to Papa Eliot.” He patted his thigh as though Quentin were a particularly pathetic dog.

“There isn’t—it wouldn’t really—uh, I mean.” Eliot watched patiently as Quentin reached for a thread he could grasp onto. “Do you ever, um. Do you think about them? Our friends?” Quentin avoided Eliot's eyes, watching his hands trace the stitching in their quilt.

A soft sigh gusted from the other man. “There isn't a day that I don't miss Margo. On the bad days—the absolute worst—I even miss Todd.” He shot Quentin a vaguely queasy expression that Quentin was reasonably sure was meant to make him laugh.

Quentin couldn't muster much more than a weak smile. "I don't mean—um, missing them. Exactly.” He felt shame drape over his shoulders like a shroud. He couldn’t bring himself to say the words, to explain the resentment he aimed inward. “We just, we left them.”

"It's a quest, Q. It’s not like we had any say in this. What else are we supposed to do when destiny calls?”

"Destiny is bullshit," Quentin said automatically. It was an argument they both knew the dance steps to. They weren't prepared, they didn't have enough time, it should have been someone else. Julia had her broken magic, Alice was someone Quentin barely recognized anymore, Margo was trapped in Fillory, and Penny was dead—well, mostly. Even so, Quentin thought maybe if any of them were here instead of him, they’d have figured out—something by now. Instead, all of that sat like a video on pause, waiting eternally for Eliot and Quentin to get their acts together here in the past.

Quentin didn't have it in him to run his lines. He just said again, "We left."

"I know," Eliot said. Quentin blinked in surprise. "Platitudes and unbridled optimism aside, yes. Everything's fucked up—royally, in my case, even. But you and me? We have time to fix this. Fix all of it."

They didn't know that, Quentin thought ardently, but what Eliot said, it felt right.

"And when we get back—with the key—it'll be like we were never gone."

“Right,” Quentin said, toneless. If they ever even got the key.

Eliot took a sharp breath, paused, and let it out through his nose as he gave up on whatever thought preoccupied his mind. He turned away, threw the blanket form his lap, and stood. Gratitude and regret warred inside Quentin. "We're not giving up on them," Eliot said with conviction. It wasn't what he wanted to say, but it was worth saying.

* * *

The setting sun cast a soft glow over the rocky beach, deep blue waters lapping gently against the orange shore, fading into a misty horizon of lush, green mountaintops. Quentin and Julia walked, hand in hand, along the water’s edge, disturbing the grassy reeds as a gentle fog slid in.

"I can't believe this is really Fillory," Julia said. "It's so real."

"It's always been real," Quentin said. "We both knew that."

"You did," Julia corrected, head tilted down as she watched her careful steps, bare feet tiny beside Quentin's. Everything about Julia looked small beside him. "I wasn't with you, Q."

He shook his head, protest ready on his tongue. She was, she was there when it counted, when they first reached Fillory—together.

"I wasn't with you on the island that day."

And that was when Quentin realized he knew exactly where they were: Coronation Island. He remembered kneeling before Margo, remembered crowning Eliot the High King of Fillory on the very spot where he stood.

"High King Eliot the Spectacular," Julia said, as though reading his mind. "And High Queen Margo the Destroyer," she continued. "Should've been us, don't you think? High King Quentin the Miserable and High Queen Julia the Damaged."

A frown found its way to Quentin's lips. "You—"

"Weren't there," she said again with a shrug. "I was never there, Quentin. I never mattered to you once there was magic. But it's okay," she added brightly. "Neither did you, not to me. Not once there was magic."

Quentin couldn't hide the sting of her words. Julia's smile only sharpened.

"You said it: sidekick, remember?"

"Right," Quentin said, voice hollow.

"And now it's you, King Quentin the Irrelevant, with the High King of Fillory, secreted away to your own little island of the past, magic inclusive, and you just left the rest of us because, well, why would we matter as long as _you_ have magic?"

"That's not—"

"That's exactly what happened," Julia snapped. Except it wasn't, and Quentin fought to argue, wanted to tell her so badly how they did this, were doing this, _for_ everyone else. "Back there in the present, with all of magic gone—well, all magic except for me—you're worthless." Quentin's words dried up. "Of course you can't stand to stick around. I get it!" Julia spun in a tight circle and let out a giggle that lived deep in Quentin's memories, a giggle that belonged to her Jane Chatwin, chasing his Martin through a pretend-Fillory that might have been a playground, might have been a Brooklyn park. Julia spun again, and her hair fanned out before him. Quentin took a stumbling step back to avoid the whip of her curls.

Something about this Julia made him take another step back to the water's edge, some manic magic, a shift in her posture that spelled danger. She halted effortlessly, mid-spin, her back to Quentin, facing that fogged horizon glowing in twilight. The mist had risen to obscure everything beyond the water.

"So while you two are solving your little puzzle in Fillory, I guess I'll have to settle for High Queen of Earth."

She took broad strides into the lake, indifferent to the rising waters. Stumbling, half-panicked, Quentin followed her in, afraid that if he didn't, Julia would keep going until she drowned. She turned, hip deep in the water, expression fixing Quentin in place. Her smile exposed her teeth in a sickening facsimile of cheer more reminiscent of the dead, shadeless look in her eyes Quentin had fought so hard to fix. The moon rose, red and menacing through the fog behind her.

"Jules—"

"I've taken away your magic before," she said, her smile turning bloody. "Kneel before your queen, Quentin."

Quentin didn't think, couldn't, only sank to his knees, water flooding his clothes and roaring at his ears. Julia’s hands were still, but Quentin was under her spell. He fought to tilt his head up out of the lake, to take a breath, beg. Quentin fought to do anything at all.

Quentin couldn't move.

The water was rising.

Quentin couldn't breathe.

"Let's see you do magic now."

He woke gasping for breath. He scrambled against the quilt until he was sitting, arms free. Hands trembling, he ran through familiar motions, grasping for the truth, for magic. When he finally spread his fingers in the final movement of the casting, a glow like hundreds of fireflies spread softly through the small cabin.

Quentin sobbed softly in relief, able to truly breathe for the first time since he woke.

"Not that I'm complaining," grumbled Eliot, "but I'm definitely complaining." He burrowed his face deeper into his pillow.

"Shit, sorry." A flick of his wrist dismissed the magical lights, plunging the room back into darkness. "I'm sor—fuck." He still couldn't breathe right. "Sorry."

"Quentin? What's wrong?" Eliot asked, half-conscious but already moving to sit up.

"No, nothing, it's—sorry. Go back to sleep."

Eliot sighed. It wasn't a harsh sound, but it was dramatic and so, _so_ Eliot. "No one turns the lights on in the middle of the night for nothing." He folded the quilt down from his chin, exposing his bare collarbone. "Spill."

"I just, I had to be sure. You know, that it still, that I still...could." Memories flooded him—of hundreds of attempts, of failed spells and fruitless castings practical applications with no practical results, all in the few weeks after magic was shut off. The world, sucked dry.

His dream had made it all the more real, made him certain nothing would happen, that his magic—and only his—would never work again. Darkly, he imagined this quest, imagined living day in and day out here in Fillory, surrounded by magic, by Eliot, working to restore magic, only to be missing it from himself.

"Bad dream," he admitted, voice breaking as he deflated back into his pillow.

"Do you ever have any good ones?" Eliot asked, not unkindly.

"Sometimes I kiss people."

"People?"

Quentin's face warmed at the suggestion underlying Eliot's words. "Sometimes," he answered enigmatically.

Eliot yawned, dramatically exaggerated. "How about we both have one of those dreams then?" He reached across Quentin's chest and pulled him back down into the mattress. Quentin didn't fight him, didn't want to.

Quentin fell back asleep with Eliot's arm heavy and warm across his chest.

* * *

Eliot and Margo were seated at their tea table, each dressed in their royal best, Margo's jeweled eyepatch a perfect complement to the studded buttons of Eliot's coat. They watched, stoic and disinterested, as Quentin, stumbling and indescribably quotidian, was escorted roughly before them by two masked palace guards.

"Quentin Coldwater," recited Eliot, voice high and cold. The sound of his name in that voice, devoid entirely of any of the fondness and warmth Quentin felt for Eliot, made Quentin flinch.

"Man up," Margo spat. Her voice always held the razor's edge, capable of making him feel insignificant. "Where is your fealty to the crown?"

Quentin swallowed his fear. This was El and Margo, his friends—he thought. "I'm a King of Fillory, too," he insisted, proud at the steadiness of his voice.

"Please," Eliot scoffed. "That's little more than a technicality."

"An ambassador at best," added Margo.

"When was the last time you were even at Castle Whitespire?" Eliot asked, voice dripping with scorn.

Channeling his hurt into anger, Quentin pulled himself up to his full height. "That's not my fault. Magic—"

"Not your fault?" Margo cooed, tapping her tongue against her teeth to accentuate each sharp T. "Magic's gone, and honey, you were the one left standing after that little showdown.

"Someone's gotta be held responsible."

Still sprawled in his seat, Eliot snapped his fingers. "Guards!" A cold chill drove its path down Quentin's spine. The towering, faceless guards bracketing Quentin dragged him forward until he stood, thighs pressed against the table, over the two monarchs.

Margo rose to her feet, rolling her eyes, hindered by inconvenience. Eliot rolled forward, leaning his weight over his lap. He held his hands out in front of Quentin, watching expectantly.

"What?"

"Your hands, Quentin," Margo said.

Quentin felt nothing through the fear. Though he knew he should trust these people, they treated him like a stranger. He wanted more than anything to say he couldn't recognize either of them, but Quentin knew there was nothing unfamiliar in the Eliot seated before him.

Shaking, he placed his hands, palms down, in Eliot's, seeking the warm, reassuring squeeze of his fingers. Instead, Eliot wrenched his hands into position, palms skyward.

The guard to Quentin's left unsheathed a large blade, smooth, sharp and straight. Quentin's breath escaped him as Margo's words sank in: _Someone's gotta be held responsible_.

Margo stood opposite the guard, Eliot and Quentin held in the middle.

"Margo—El, please," Quentin begged, humiliating tears falling from his cheeks. He tugged at his hands, desperate to be freed, but Eliot held him, hands a painful vice around his fingers. His skin was cold, cold like the blade whispering at his wrists.

"There's always a price," Margo said solemnly as the blade fell.

Quentin's hands were still held in Eliot's grip when he startled awake. With another hard pull, Quentin wrenched his fists from Eliot's loose grasp, desperate curse falling with his breath, panic blinding him to circumstance.

"Q, hey!" Eliot shouted.

Wide-eyed, still sensitive to that sharp edge of Eliot's voice, that cold cruelty blending dream and reality, Quentin froze, breaths heaving in fearful sobs.

Even in the dark, Eliot must have seen something nakedly animal about him. "Shit," hissed Eliot, the curse an apology.

Eliot cast quickly in a familiar series of motions, and a scattering of firefly lights spread through the room. In the dim light, Quentin could make out the red, angry welt of a blooming bruise just below Eliot's left eye.

Concern pierced through Quentin's panic, startling him into reality. "The fuck happened to you?"

Eliot stared, licked his lips once, deliberately, as he nodded in response to some unasked question. "We are talking about this." His tone left no room for argument.

Quentin rolled his eyes in protest, but he had no energy to fight him on it. He wasn't sure he even wanted to. “Fine,” he said weakly. He tried to meet Eliot’s eyes—he knew the difference between dream and reality, but there was a different between knowing it and feeling it. Looking Eliot in the eye, Quentin felt the knife against his wrists.

“You...are what happened to me,” Eliot said after a time, his gaze equally skittish.

Quentin didn’t understand at first, but then. “Wait, are you—did I _hit_ you?”

“Absolutely socked me,” Eliot said, voice flat. “Serves me right for trying to wake you up, hm?”

“Shit,” Quentin breathed, reaching a gentle hand toward Eliot. He didn’t even shake.

Eliot made an effort, Quentin thought, not to flinch away from his touch, still avoiding his gaze. “I’ve had worse,” he said, as though that made it any better.

Quentin didn’t know what to feel for, fingers prodding gently like there was some damage he could soothe under Eliot’s warm skin.

“Still,” Eliot added, “you’re stronger than you look. My good looks may never recover.”

“It isn’t funny,” Quentin said, voice a growl, as he pulled his hand back. “You’ve made your point.”

Something shifted in Eliot’s face, something less playful, more befitting the crown of the High King. It stole Quentin’s breath for a heartbeat. “Actually I haven’t even _danced around_ my point, Coldwater.”

Quentin absently brushed a tangled lock of hair behind his ear.

Something shook loose in Eliot’s face, and his eyes grew soft. “Q, this doesn’t work unless we talk.”

This. This partnership. This quest. This island of the past.

“Great. Okay. Let’s share dreams, you go first,” Quentin challenged, feeling his own bluff.

Eliot stared impatiently. “Fine. Sometimes I kiss people,” he said. “And usually those dreams aren’t interrupted by my—my bed partner’s knuckles in my eye socket.”

Quentin huffed a breath. He should have known better than to expect a straight answer. “I—I don’t know what you want me to say, Eliot. My brain’s pretty shitty to me 80% of the time, it’s not like that just stops because I’m asleep.”

“Fine, you want to know my last nightmare?” Eliot’s face twisted, and suddenly Quentin didn’t. He wanted to tell Eliot to stop, that it didn’t matter, but he couldn’t get his tongue to work and Eliot, well, he’s in Performer Mode. “Picture it: Encanto Occulto. Beaches. Bikinis. Cock...tails. It’s me and Margo except it’s not Margo, it’s the Fairy Bitch and I need to kill her. But it’s still her face. And the whole time, there’s Idri—the Lorian King,” Eliot adds for Quentin’s sake, like Quentin could forget about the man Eliot’s going to marry, “and he’s telling me to do it for Fillory. For us.

“So I kill her. And Idri—it’s like it’s the sexist thing he’s ever seen.”

“Jesus, El. Is—are they always about—“

Quentin didn’t know what he was even asking, but Eliot steers him, still a performance. “About sex? Not all, but a certain percentage.” And Quentin knows it wasn’t that.

“I was going to say about Margo.”

And then he was just Eliot again, drained and a little lost. “Not always. But often.”

Quentin began his next sentence four different ways in his head before the words made it to his tongue. All in one quick breath, he released, “Margo was in my dream, too.”

Eliot rocked back, watching him with care—his Active Listening Face, Eliot called it once—and Quentin was struck by a shiver of performance anxiety. Seeing Eliot, like this, 100% attention on Quentin, made his heart beat faster every time.

“And, uh, so were you. It was—the trials? But we were in Fillory, I think anyway. You were wearing your crowns and Margo had her, uh.” He gestured to his eye and Eliot gave a sharp nod, shadow crossing his face only momentarily. “And I was some kind of prisoner? Or—I was on trial. You were judging me.”

Usually Active Listening Eliot bit back any glib commentary, but it seemed he couldn’t resist. “We always judge you. That’s not a nightmare.” The words were so easy for him, Quentin wondered if it was a reflex.

Quentin shook his head, both to clear it and to correct Eliot. He was losing the detail of the dream, but the knife was still clear in his memory, so he told Eliot about that. About his hands in Eliot’s, about how he struggled but wouldn’t pull free, no matter what he did or how he begged. He ran his fingers through his hair just because he could. “I had to, um...pay the price, for magic.”

Eliot reached out his fingers to Quentin’s wrist, thumb tracing an invisible seam. He mouthed Quentin’s words as though it would help him understand.

“Yeah, uh. Most of my dreams are about losing magic. Or being back home, without it.”

“And about your friends blaming you?”

“There might be some...recurring themes.”

Eliot watched him strangely. “Uh-huh. Q, please tell me your daytime brain is will and truly aware that it is not your fault?”

Quentin felt again that hot shame flood his face and dropped his eyes to the quilt. It was easier to confess to the bed than to Eliot. “You know, it—it makes sense. Blaming me, hating me, not...caring about me.

“I _should_ be here. This is my mess to fix, but you—you didn’t, it’s not your—“

“Whoa, hey.” Eliot reached for him before rethinking the motion, hands frozen in place between them. “I’m not going anywhere. This is _our_ quest.”

Quentin looked up, his eyes damp and heavy from his half-aborted panic. The soft weight of Eliot’s gaze knocked the fight out of his body.

“I couldn’t hate you,” Eliot whispered. “I’ve fucked up plenty, too,” he offers like a reason. Like it somehow proves that Quentin’s not worth hating.

“I just want to sleep,” Quentin said, instead of _I deserve it_. He gave an exhausted half-shrug. “I just want to close my eyes and not be reminded that I’m, I’m this kind of person whose fuck-ups are on some cosmic scale.”

“You’re the kind of person who goes to cosmic lengths to prove you’re _not_ a fuck-up,” Eliot said, but that wasn’t what Quentin meant.

Quentin almost laughed. “Yeah, well, look how well that works,” he said, thinking of Alice. Thinking of Julia. Thinking of magic itself. He gestures to Eliot’s eye. “I break things, Eliot,” he admitted, voice cracking as it tightened.

Eliot’s mouth pressed into a thin, determined line. “It takes a lot more than this to break me, Quentin Coldwater.”

He reached across the space between them on the bed and took Quentin’s hand, careful to leave him the option to pull away.

Quentin didn’t pull away. He let Eliot hold his hand, tug him closer.

“Sleep?” he said, glancing significantly between Quentin and his pillow, even waggling his eyebrows for effect.

Quentin wanted to laugh. He shook his head, frustration pricking at the corners of his eyes. “What if...it doesn’t stop?” he said, lying down anyway.

“Then you wake me up and we’ll do some magic,” Eliot said, mirroring Quentin’s position. He flicked his wrist to dispel the light. “Sleep.”

Quentin lay stiff as a board, barely aware Eliot was beside him. He wondered if he, too, was staring, wide-eyed, at the ceiling, or if he’d drifted off as easily as he made everything look. If he’d drift away from Quentin as easily once he realized Quentin was right.

“I said sleep, not overthink.”

Quentin took a breath of courage. “Can you...” He hated to ask, might not deserve it, but he needed this. Needed to be anything but alone. He reached for Eliot’s arm under the covers. “Please?”

He needed Eliot.

Silence stretched between them as Eliot parsed what Quentin was asking for. The retraction— _you don’t have to,_ _it’s_ _dumb, forget it, please please forget it_ —fizzled on his tongue as Eliot rolled toward him, his arm scooping over Quentin’s waist. Quentin’s breath caught.

“Anytime, Q,” Eliot said, something pleased in his voice.


End file.
